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To: Robert Korulczyk <robert@korulczyk.pl>, Wes <netmo.php@gmail.com>,
 "G. P. B." <george.banyard@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Message-ID: <06473788-a34b-f041-36e6-31d19d8dda4c@cubiclesoft.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:36:51 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [VOTE] Deprecate PHP's short open tags
From: thruska@cubiclesoft.com (Thomas Hruska)

On 4/11/2019 1:12 AM, Robert Korulczyk wrote:
>> Sorry for the sarcasm, please don't consider this as a personal attack. The
>> whole community (not just you) considers short open tags poison because not
>> XML-compatible...
> 
> This is rather removing another trap from the language. As long as short open tags exist and depend on INI directive, there will be bugs and source
> code leaks after moving application to a different environment. Using <?php over <? is the only safe way to write PHP code, and now you need an
> external tool to enforce this.

I wouldn't say it is the ONLY safe way.  Turning it on permanently would 
also solve the problem and there's also allowing '<?[whitespace 
character]' as a permanent always-on option.  (Native XML compatibility 
is a complaint, not a requirement of a language.  XML is also basically 
dead in my corner of the PHP universe, only ever cropping up on very 
rare and very confused occasions.)

It's going to be interesting to see how many people who rely on and 
*prefer* using short open tags in internal systems come out of the 
woodwork when PHP 7.4 and 8 drops.  Maybe I'm the only one who likes 
saving a few characters here and there and thinks code is more readable 
without the verbose tag.

The vote is on the knife's edge of passing/failing at the moment and 
could go a couple of unusual directions as already noted elsewhere. 
This is probably the most interesting RFC *vote* to happen in a long while.

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Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President

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